March 31, 2009

Small lib arts colleges are luxuries?

In an NYT article about drastic changes in application rates to various colleges, Ivy League type colleges as well as elite state schools are seeing lots more applications this year, while elite liberal arts colleges are seeing no change or a plummet in their applications.

The common factor to Harvard, Stanford, UNC Chapel Hill, and UVA, and which is absent at Williams, Middlebury, etc., is that the former are big research institutions where the faculty get a lot of shit done, while profs at liberal arts colleges -- and even the physical campus itself -- tend to be very isolated from the real world.

Going to Williams rather than Columbia is like bragging that you majored in French lit rather than physics or economics. It's a signal of conspicuous frivolity. Therefore, it's no surprise that, just as their parents are slashing their handbag and vacation budgets, teenagers are going with a more surefire way to financial stability.

It rubs off on smart, hard-working young people when they're surrounded by role models who don't accomplish much, while being surrounded by workaholic researchers better enculturates them into the real world.

7 comments:

That's one possible explanation, but there are many others that seem more plausible, in part because the chances of even seeing any of those "workaholic researchers" as an undergrad at Harvard et al is miniscule. For one, state schools are much cheaper, so when money is tight it makes sense that families would pressure their kids to save money and stay close to home. Second, even after their recent losses, the Ivies and Stanford still have endowments an order of magnitude larger than most liberal arts colleges, and thus are able to give more financial aid. On top of that, the Ivies and especially big state schools all have much larger alumni networks than liberal arts colleges simply because of the differences in enrollment, and prospective students may be thinking that they'll need that type of edge to get a job in this economy.

Anyway, your interpretation doesn't seem to jive with the data in the article. Ivy League Penn saw a grand total of 4 more applicants than last year, liberal arts colleges Wesleyan, Bryn Mawr, and Wellesley all saw increases in applications, and flagship state school UW-Madison saw a drop.

Penn is the only elite research to not experience the "sharp jumps" that the others did.

Most lib arts are steady or sharply down -- even the ones that are up are only "up slightly." Read the article.

And sorry, but UW Madison is not in the same league as UNC Chapel Hill or UVA, and besides is only one data-point.

So, I'm right.

the chances of even seeing any of those "workaholic researchers" as an undergrad at Harvard et al is miniscule.

The work ethic pervades the entire atmosphere. There's a larger culture of working hard and wanting to dominate everyone else. Even the TAs / grad students are elite schools are go-getters.

state schools are much cheaper, so when money is tight it makes sense that families would pressure their kids to save money and stay close to home.

Then why are super-expensive research schools that are far away from most people seeing "sharp jumps" in applications? Think it through.

the Ivies and especially big state schools all have much larger alumni networks than liberal arts colleges simply because of the differences in enrollment, and prospective students may be thinking that they'll need that type of edge to get a job in this economy.

Why do you phrase this as contradicting my argument? It is yet another reason why lib arts schools are frivolous luxuries, and elite research schools are more useful.

"Second, even after their recent losses, the Ivies and Stanford still have endowments an order of magnitude larger than most liberal arts colleges, and thus are able to give more financial aid."

I recommend rereading an Econ 101 textbook, especially the chapter labeled "price discrimination". Financial aid isn't given out of generosity, it's given so the universities can extract the calculated maximum revenue from their customers.

The linked article is no help, but my guess is that the colleges which have really seen a dropoff in applications are the academically run-of-the-mill private colleges. They're more expensive than public institutions, often substantially so, and because most have small endowments they can't offer much in terms of financial aid.

Colleges of this sort also seem to do a lot of advertising - one of them near me has practically blanketed some train stations with poster ads - which may be a sign that they're scrambling to get enough applications.